The officer in charge stood in front of the spectral orb, hands on hips as he stared intensely at the display. He was a thickset man whose straight-backed posture made him look impressively authoritative in the force’s blue-and-black uniform. Callum narrowed his eyes as the officer turned to greet them. There was something about the man’s bald head and thin wire-rimmed glasses that he found irritatingly familiar. The memory was elusive, which he hated; it was an experience that was growing more frequent these days. He gave up and asked Apollo to run a match.
“Adjutant-General David Johnston, Supreme Commander, Alpha Defense, on a five-year secondment from the British military general staff office.”
“The Gylgen emergency cleanup,” Callum exclaimed.
“Oh, well done. I was wondering if you’d remember.” Johnston gave Danuta a shrewd glance before smiling at Callum. “I was sorry to hear you died shortly after that. Still, nice to see you’ve recovered.”
Callum grinned and put his hand out. “Modern medicine. It’s a fucking miracle.”
“Quite.” Johnston’s grip was proof he didn’t spend all his time deep underground behind a desk. “And on the subject of miracles, I think we might be needing another about now. If you could oblige…”
“Sorry, miracles aren’t my department.” Callum looked around the Command Center. There were three chairs spaced equidistantly around the display bubble, an empty one next to Johnston, and two others with Alpha Defense captains sitting in them. Both of them had hologram cubes of data floating in attendance like geometric halos, which held a great deal more information than could be splashed across tarsus lenses. He frowned, peering through the sparklehaze of the bubble, trying to see the rest of the operatives. “Where is everyone?”
Johnston gave him a sly smile. “We are everyone, my boy, us precious few.”
Dread spread down Callum’s spine like a creeping frost. “Three people? To defend the whole Sol system?”
“Three humans, and one of the largest G8Turing cube arrays ever built. Basically, we’re here to provide overall strategy; the Turings take care of everything else. It’s actually the perfectly simplified command structure that every general has dreamed of since the Tumu Crisis.”
“Okay. As an engineer I always approve of simplified systems. But what systems do we actually have?”
Johnston gave Danuta another pointed glance. “If the intelligence I’ve just been given is correct and the Olyix are about to invade, we can probably slow them down by a few hours.”
“Fuck! What about the weapons platforms?”
“All nine of them?” Johnston asked quietly. “We might manage to get a few hits in if hostile alien ships do approach Earth, but they’re not highly maneuverable.”
“Then what’s the bloody point in having them?”
“The weapons platform strategy was to have eighty of them, in three distinct cis-lunar orbits. An onion-layer defense, if you like. That way it would be extremely tough for anything to approach Earth from space. But the thing is, we do have reliable sensor coverage out beyond Pluto. And if another arkship, or armada, is flying toward Sol, we’ll be able to see its exhaust emission from a light-year away as it decelerates. Nothing can creep up on us. On top of that, governments and companies have explored nearly every star system within eighty light-years. There’s nothing intrinsically hostile out there. As a military man, I appreciate the huge political support Alpha Defense receives from Connexion. Unfortunately, what we’ve learned about this region of the galaxy has shown us the most dangerous thing out there is fourteen exoplanets with primordial soup atmospheres, that might—or might not—produce multicellular life in a billion years’ time. It’s difficult to gather political determination in those circumstances. We’ve never faced any threat.”
“Until today,” Danuta said.
“Yes. Until today.”
“So what can you do?” Callum asked.
“Based on what I’ve been told about the potential size of the Olyix invasion, I believe we can buy Earth’s countryside and ribbontown populations a little extra time to get under the city shields.”
“That’s it?”
It might have been the telomere treatments Johnston had received, thickening and stiffening his skin against the onset of age, but there was no expression of remorse showing on his face. “Yes.”
“I might be able to help,” Danuta said.
Both Callum and Johnston gave her a curious look.
“What sort of help?” Callum asked.
“The Connexion Olyix Monitoring Office has a contingency planning team,” Danuta said. “Given Ainsley’s level of mistrust, it was only prudent to have a viable response in the event of a worst-case scenario.”
“Oh, hell, you went more than theoretical on this, didn’t you?” Callum asked.
“Yes.”
“What have you got?” Johnston asked.
“If the Salvation of Life initiated a hostile act, we would be able to strike at it with WMDs.”
“WMDs? You mean nukes?” Callum exclaimed. “Fuck! Ainsley Zangari has his own personal stash of nuclear weapons?”
“Contingency only,” Danuta said. “And it’s not grandfather alone who authorizes their use. There is a commission that has to approve their activation.”
“A commission of Zangaris?”
“Yes.”
“Let me guess, you’re on the commission?”
“I have that privilege.”
“How many nukes?” Johnston asked.
“We have thirty warheads, with a yield of seventy megatons each. They can be deployed through the portals we have surrounding L3, either on high-acceleration missiles, or stealthed low-velocity astrodrones.”
“Seventy megatons? Bloody hell, that’s big!”
Danuta’s lips twitched a knowing smile. “Big enough to crack open an asteroid.”
“So much for the ’68 disarmament treaty,” a piqued Callum said. “And everything that was done to preserve it.”
“They’re laser-triggered fusion warheads,” Danuta said. “We don’t use fissionable material. And they were only built for one purpose: defending us. I think we all now agree that was justified.”
Callum wanted to snap a smartass reply at her, but held his tongue.
“Okay,” Johnston said. “So what do you even need Alpha Defense for?”
“Your sensor network,” Danuta told him. “We have L3 under total surveillance through our portals, but if what Jessika said is true, then we could be facing a fleet of warships.”
“Deliverance ships, she called them,” Eldlund said. “She said they’d come out of the Salvation of Life’s wormhole.”
“Whatever they’re called, we need to track them,” Danuta said.
“That we can do,” Johnston said.
The image in the bubble display shifted, with Earth expanding until it filled the whole sphere. Continents were etched in neon purple, with cities glowing vivid orange. But as Callum watched, some of the orange patches began flicking over to a vivid blue. Johnston gave the planetary globe a satisfied nod as the transformation spread.
“Are those the shields?” Callum asked.
“Yes. We issued the Code One activation order just as you arrived. We’re early, of course, playing it very safe, so they won’t all go on. There are plenty of defense agencies that like to assert their independence for political reasons, especially with no physical evidence of an emergency. But this many responding, initially, is promising; it means we don’t have to waste time chasing after everyone. You and your allies can apply political pressure through the Sol Senate on any recalcitrant governments.”
Danuta shook her head disparagingly at the predominantly orange-shaded cities on the North American continent. “Oh, typical.”
There might have been a smile on Johnston’s li
ps, but Callum found it hard to tell. “Don’t worry, Alik will knock ’em into shape.”
“South of the border not too great at taking orders, either,” Eldlund commented.
As Callum watched, a few cities in South America were turning from orange to blue. The process was achingly slow. He couldn’t help himself and checked Aberdeen, finding it glowing a reassuring sapphire. Not that he’d been back there for a century, and any family was so distant now they were just names Apollo maintained in low-priority contact files. But still…the old hometown. Edinburgh, he was pleased to notice, was also secure under its thick wall of bonded air.
Yuri’s face splashed up on the wall behind Johnston’s chair. “We think it’s starting,” he announced.
“No change to the Salvation of Life status,” Johnston said.
“Maybe not, but my department is reporting a significant rise in incidents down here. The interstellar hubs are being subjected to digital attack. The G8s are stopping most of it, but auxiliary systems are getting badly chewed up.”
“Any physical sabotage?” Callum asked.
“Possibly. Communication with several hubs is either confused or out, even with our secure backup channels. We’re sending tactical teams now to find out what’s actually happening. I’ve ordered isolation protocols for all interstellar portals—at both ends.”
“Ah, crap,” Callum muttered.
Alik’s face appeared next to Yuri’s. “No sign of this invasion fleet then, huh?”
“Not yet,” Callum said.
“Okay, well, the good news is that DC is now a believer. Some important people around here were deeply disturbed by what I explained to them. The Pentagon will be complying with the Alpha Defense request for the city shields to be switched on.”
“Order,” Johnston said. “Our order to activate city shields.”
“Whatever. And guess what? The first one up is going to be Washington itself.”
Callum grinned. “No self-interest there, then?”
“Absolutely not. Just leading by example, is all. Yuri, NYC will also be up in the next ten minutes.”
“Thank you.”
Johnston suddenly stiffened and turned to the display bubble. “Christ almighty!”
“What?” Callum asked—not that he needed to. He knew. He’d known from the moment he’d looked into the fractured skull of Feriton Kayne and seen the alien flesh squatting there. It’s real. Sweet shit, it’s actually happening.
“All communications with the Lobby just dropped out.”
“Dropped out?”
“Cut. Hit by darkware. Powered down. Sabotaged…Whatever, they’ve gone. We’re getting nothing.”
“How many people on board?”
“It’s the main commercial transfer station for the Salvation of Life. There’s a lot of traffic through there.”
“How many?”
“Probably two thousand permanent technicians. The service shuttles need plenty of maintenance.”
“Yuri!” Callum said.
“Way ahead of you. My first order was closing all the portals to the Lobby. Salvation of Life has no portal link to the rest of the Sol system.”
“There’s a change of status alert coming in,” Johnston said. “Getting a visual.”
The bubble display instantly switched to the alien arkship. Callum was captivated by the sight. The vast cylindrical mass was venting mountain-high jets of white gas from fissures in its smooth rock surface. Curving plumes that glimmered in the raw sunlight, forming a beautiful, ephemeral wheel slashing vigorously across the stars.
“Did you do that?” Callum asked.
“No,” Danuta replied. “We haven’t launched anything.”
“Then what the hell’s happening?”
Yuri’s day-to-day office was on the eighty-second floor of Connexion’s global headquarters, a one-hundred-twenty-story tower on West 59th Street. It gave him an unsurpassed vista of Central Park and the city beyond, as well as putting him on top of his fiefdom: the Security Division, which occupied the eight stories below. The floors above were taken up by the executive and board offices, which gave him an insight into Ainsley Zangari’s priorities back when he was founding Connexion. The CEO had always been very protective of his corporate child, as confirmed by the location of the Security Division’s operation center, buried at huge expense nine floors below ground level in an ultra-secure basement. It was a flower-shaped chamber with a petal segment covering each of Earth’s continents, then one for the Sol system habitats and another for the industrial asteroids, with the last petal dedicated to the interstellar hubs. Each segment had a display bubble in the center, with four or five operatives sitting around it on couches, from which they could direct paramilitary firepower, G8Turings, and intelligence operatives that rivaled—and, in plenty of cases, surpassed—the armed forces of small nations. The strategy center in the middle of the flower, its stamen, was formed by open archways into each segment, allowing the duty officer to oversee events in each sector.
It was Anne Groell’s luck—or misfortune—to be sitting on the central couch when Yuri and Loi arrived from Kruse Station. Yuri told her to keep her place and run operations for him; she’d been with Connexion security for forty-three years, and before that served eight years in the Devil’s Brigade, Canada’s elite special forces. He respected her professionalism and grace under pressure.
Though even she muttered “motherfucker” when he briefed her on what might be about to hit them.
Reports of odd malfunctions and hub breakdowns began almost as soon as he and Loi arrived. Within minutes, it was clear an organized sabotage operation was being run against Connexion. The scale of it began to worry Yuri; it was a lot worse than he’d been expecting.
He told Boris, his altme, to open an ultrasecure link to the Olyix Monitoring office. They’d built it inside an asteroid called Teucer, out in the Jupiter Trailing Trojan cluster, a vast swarm of asteroids following the gas giant’s orbit around the sun. The clandestine stash of nuclear weapons that Connexion physicists had built there was the one thing that gave him hope that they might just manage to strike the Olyix hard before any real threat emerged.
Boris splashed the Teucer armory icon on his tarsus lenses, and he saw that Danuta was also accessing the secret station out in the Trailing Trojan asteroid cluster. Ainsley III had issued the code to five people, providing redundancy in case the Olyix sabotage was better than anyone was predicting. The responsibility was awesome—especially if they were wrong about the Olyix. But Yuri couldn’t shake the image of that alien brain nesting parasitically in Feriton’s shattered skull. He’d wanted Ainsley and Ainsley III to launch their nukes at Salvation of Life the instant he regained secure communication with the Zangari family executive, but they’d overruled him, saying they needed final proof. “If we’re wrong, we’ll be committing genocide,” Ainsley III had pronounced.
The Teucer armory needed authorization from two code holders. What surprised Yuri was Ainsley himself not immediately loading his override code in. But these days things were different; the old man no longer had supreme authority over everything. The family had started reining him in over a decade ago.
“Let’s have Alpha Defense online,” Yuri said. “We’ll coordinate with them.”
Anne nodded curtly. The Luna Command Center appeared on a screen between a couple of the archways, showing Callum standing next to Johnston. “We think it’s starting,” Yuri told them.
“No change to the Salvation of Life status,” Johnston replied.
Which made Yuri doubt Jessika. He hated that—especially as she’d saved his life thirty-two years ago, which admittedly colored his feelings. Back then he’d been so much more decisive; age wasn’t turning out to be wisdom, just uncertainty.
As he explained the outbreak of sabotage to Alpha Defense, Boris gave him an ultras
ecure link to Danuta. “I think we need to arm the warheads,” he told her. “This sabotage isn’t just coincidence. Jessika predicted this.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “What if Jessika’s Neána are the hostiles and we fell for the disinformation?”
“Shit. Okay.” He’d half expected Danuta to agree unconditionally and provide an ironclad confirmation bias. But now…She’s as paranoid as me, for fuck’s sake. There’s just so much at stake.
Alik joined the session, and Yuri had to admit he was reassured by the fact that New York’s shield would be switched on. Even deep below Connexion’s tower, he’d felt vulnerable to the open sky. His relief didn’t last long. Groell splashed the sensor images of Salvation of Life inside a big hologram cube. He frowned at the huge fountains of vapor jetting out from cracks that were appearing in the arkship’s surface. Cracks that he saw were slowly growing wider and wider.
“All communications with the Lobby just dropped out,” Johnston said.
Yuri held his breath as a change of status alert began. He kept watching the image of the arkship with its giant plumes of bright vapor seething outward.
“Did you do that?” a subdued Callum asked.
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